Originally posted by Cris
If that was all that religion represented then why choose such an approach as opposed to say psychology that is a rigorous systematic method of thought designed specifically to understand human behavior. Why choose an undisciplined system rather than a disciplined system?
Cris;
You’ve set up a false dilemma. Mathematics is a
mostly rigorous and disciplined system. Psychology is
moderately rigorous and disciplined compared with Mathematics. Religion is
minimally rigorous and disciplined compared with Mathematics. The degree of discipline is necessitated (in general) by the accessibility of the related subject. Accessibility is defined by 1) the degree to which definitions regarding the subject are generally accepted. 2) The degree to which the subject can be directly (or indirectly) examined. 3) The reducibility of the whole subject into examinable parts. 4) complexity of the totality of the subject being examined. For each subject being examined, one chooses the most rigorous and disciplined system that will yield useful results.
Math is mostly rigorous
In Mathematics, the definitions are generally accepted in full and the elements being examined are directly accessible because they are already concepts and not abstractions of physical entities which first must be converted into concepts. By nature, the fundamental concepts of mathematics already exist as fully reduced and can be examined in their interactions.
Psychology is less rigorous than math
In psychology, arguments over definitions lead to different schools of thought and areas of research. Psychology started as a purely behavioral science, since the structure and function of the brain were largely inaccessible at the time (notwithstanding Phineas p. Gage, Xev). Modern psychology is much more rigorous and disciplined because of vastly greater knowledge of brain structure and function. But complete reducibility is impossible since the system being examined is self-referential: it is after all, the mind examining itself.
Religion is less rigorous than psychology
Religion, or more exactly religious truth (as opposed to theology, the rational study of religious truth) has by definition the most complex subject (god or nature of being), is largely irreducible and so is unyielding to conceptualization, and on the whole devoid of common definition because of its subjective nature. It must be treated more like archeology or history than mathematics, and that is precisely the point of my original post. Rationalists insist on applying too rigorous a standard, while adherents and believers fail to apply any rigorous and disciplined standard at all.
Given the above argument, I will reformulate your question as follows:
Why choose a less formalized system rather than a more formalized system?
Because things such as gut feeling, intuition, psi, spiritual existence, God et al
cannot be studied by anything as formal as the scientific method. Science has nothing to say one way or the other about them. As Raithere eluded to, the situation is completely reflexive – you may sound like a half-wit to me for dismissing things that are subjectively real to me, and I may sound like an irrational maniac for believing things that can’t possible exist or be proven to exist to you. But these things have subjective reality to me, not because I read about them in a book and took them as fact. They are real to me because
first I had the subjective experience which lacked a rational explanation, and
then I discovered the most formalized system that gave the current best explanation for dealing with the phenomena – religion (more precisely, religious truth or spirituality. In truth, I am not a fan of religion in the way it is being practiced. But for the sake of this thread, the term ‘religion’ will do.)
You have chosen the path of extreme rationalism, thereby IMHO limiting the areas of human experience that you can investigate. You resort to loaded words and phrases such as “undisciplined or “imaginative fantasies” to dismiss an entire field of human experience, simply because [again my IMHO] you lack the tools and/or flexibility of mind to study it. In that respect you are making the same error as the religious fanatics – you’re simply unbalanced in the other direction. As Mr. Miyagi say: If whole life have balance, everything will be better
(edited slightly in an attempt not to be too offensive to Cris)
